Home › Subjects › O-Level History › Paper 1: Conflict across Europe and the Asia-Pacific

O-Level Paper 1: Conflict across Europe and the Asia-Pacific

how the Second World War began

What the syllabus expects

• The chain of events that brought war to Europe for a second time
  Scope: How feeble the League proved across the 1930s, with disarmament collapsing and the 1935 crisis in Abyssinia carrying serious consequences; the belligerent line Germany took abroad, seen in the Saar vote of 1935, troops sent back into the Rhineland in 1936, the 1938 union with Austria, the agreement at Munich together with the seizure of Czechoslovakia over 1938 and 1939, and the pact with the Soviets followed by Poland's invasion in 1939; and appeasement as a strategy
• The chain of events that brought war to the Asia-Pacific
  Scope: The League faltering through the 1930s; relations souring between Washington and Tokyo; and an expansionist Japanese line abroad, marked by hostilities against China beginning in 1937, the Co-Prosperity Sphere for a Greater East Asia, and the strike on Pearl Harbour in 1941
• Weigh why war erupted a second time in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific
• Weigh the part that particular people and factions played in the run-up to the war
• Key concepts: Militarism, Expansionism, Alliances, Theatres of war, Appeasement

More O-Level History topics

Paper 1: Southeast Asia before 1870 (background context, not assessed) · Paper 1: Extension of European control in Southeast Asia · Paper 1: How Europeans widened their grip · Paper 1: How Europeans widened their grip · Paper 1: The years following the First World War · Paper 1: Rise of Authoritarian Regimes · all of O-Level History